u/Key-Kaleidoscope2232

Context:

I've lived on a cool island for close to 11 years, mostly working on and under the ocean in the tourism industry. Over the last 6 years, several global/local incidents sent paralyzing shock waves through our industry and I decided about 1.5 years ago to really try and stay on top of the AI revolution so I'm not as reliant on things being on the "up and up" for tourism on my island.

Earlier this year I had to take a job working in a snorkel gear rental shop. The owner told us that we should show our customers his competitor's website that posts a daily snorkel conditions bulletin. Note: this bulletin was only text. No map of zones, no specific spots. As great of a resource as it is, I thought it was hilariously dumb that the owner of the shop was sending people to his biggest competitor's website right before they walked out the door.

I had already been vibe coding other more complicated map centric projects , so this felt like somewhat of low hanging fruit for me. Including purchasing and setting up the domain name for the website, I had a first build ready in like 90 minutes.

I made a map view of the island, and selected ~20 different dive spots to show on the map. How I assign the scores of each spot is where things get somewhat interesting. Every morning around 8am, I scrape several different weather sources to assist in generating the spot score. That includes NOAA, surfline, NWS, and ..... the competitors snorkel report scores. At the time, I had no clue how the competitors generated their score. My only concern is that it was highly accurate, posted everyday, and public.

I was getting great feedback from showing customers the map. What a fun rush when you see a project getting views on it. I took a stab at monetizing by having an option for people to book a boat tour with a company I'm pretty close with - no hits. Tried selling private snorkel photo tours - no hits. The only inquiries I got were actually from two competing "snorkel reports" on the island and they were just seeing how my website worked.

I added some new features that I thought were actually really cool. I made a script that automatically took screenshots from the webcams that are available on the coast and did an AI image analysis to essentially look for wind/waves/conditions that aren't snorkel conducive. If the wind/waves/conditions look bad enough ...the spot score will reduce accordingly. It genuinely is the most accurate snorkel repot on the island because of that feature.

Eventually I found a new job and eventually left the snorkel rental shop behind. What was cool was seeing that the website I made was rising in the google search even when I wasn't in the shop promoting it. My biggest week I was averaging close to 400 people a day. (Ironic because it was spring break and the entire week was horrible with dangerous ocean conditions)

I'm the kind of person who likes to have an idea, execute on it, then move on to the next thing. Could I have done more to monetize this on my own? Surely. With 100-400 visitors per day, I thought about selling ad space to local businesses. I pitched and signed a couple of restaurants that I'm friends with on a trial/data collection basis so that we could see if it brought them business. The thing is ...small business owners on the island I'm on are absolutely FLOODED with SaaS marketing and "consultants" promising the world and are so reluctant to even meeting to discuss opportunities.

I realized that I didn't want to make monetizing this thing some arbitrary goal to monetize just to say I did it. It is a great and useful tool that people were using. So instead of stressing about about running around the island trying to sell owners on ad space, that I should just try and sell the entire damn thing to someone.

I reached out to the one business that my snorkel report was ironically dependent on ... the competitor with the highly accurate daily report. Not long after the initial email, we were having a discovery call. You might imagine (and you'd be right) that the vibes got slightly awkward when he asked how I was generating spot scores and revealed that the second his site posts their report, mine scrapes it and essentially refines/rewords it then assigns it to the individual spots on my report. I admitted it was a somewhat brash decision to not only scrape his site, but to name it fairly close to what his was. Told him that the original idea was to get someones attention so we could have the exact conversation we were having.

So we set up a lunch meeting, discussed the project and a little bit about ourselves, and by the end of the meeting, had a gentleman's agreement to sell the website to them.

I'm pleased and proud to say that the deal has been fulfilled. As of yesterday, they have the website (sold as is) and I have the money ($xxxx). We are going to discuss changes/maintenance/integrations that they will pay for. They are also interested in setting up some AI layers in their company that I informed them I could build.

So yeah, I did it! And I'm already working on another MVP to drop on a local business out here thats interested in agentic AI and automation.

I think my reasons for success was

-an improvement on an existing tool

- It was a finished product

-I'm an expert in the field I was building in (tourism/ocean stuff)

- I had verified rising traction against their report

- I priced it realistically based on how long it took and the numbers it was doing

- I was honest, forthcoming, and unapologetic about how I get my data

Somethings I've learned:

These little projects might be the route to financial security rather than building something for months that you think/hope could have widespread commercial demand.

Figuring out how to get in touch with a decision maker at a business is more difficult than building software now. Being bold works. Be yourself and build around that. I literally smoked a spliff on the video chat while we transferred the domain and repo over.

Ideas don't have to be brand new or original to be commercially viable, it just has to be better.

Let your passions guide you to business

My company uses about 18 different SaaS products and I hate all of them.

I recently set up the Hermes (free and open source) platform on a VPS ($6 dollars a month) and its awesome.

I'm sending photos and voice notes from inspections and getting (consistent) branded inspection report .pdfs back before I even leave the clients house. All within a single message thread on my phone. Customers have been stoked and it helps justify and validate why our company is more expensive. Synced with my email and calendar = I just send a single message to set appointments or monitor/respond/draft emails. I can also send in the quote I generate from Acculynx directly to it, and it will then create a custom packet that has photos/details from inspection report, product information, company information etc ... again all from one-two messages. No more alt tabbing , no more transferring files, no more saving from one app just to use in another. I say I need something

Hermes + any AI subscription + VPS + a good voice to text app finally feels like I have an actual personal assistant.

Things people say that aren't true

The risk you take

Hevy with an AI agent

What Jam Bands would be bigger if they didn't market to the heady jam scene?

Just sold my first vibe coded website as a former snorkel guide.